Payroll company error prompts security breach concern

Updated 10:18 pm, Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Technical issues encountered by the city of Houston's payroll contractor could have potentially exposed personal information for nearly 5,000 local government workers, including more than 1,000 in the Houston Police Department.

Widespread notice about the compromised data emerged on Wednesday when the Houston Police Officers' Union posted a notice to members on its Facebook page.

"The HPOU was notified that ADP had a security breach in relation to the City's online W-2s. This breach is extremely low risk but does potentially affect approximately 1,300 classified HPD employees. ADP is sending letters to all employees affected and offering a free year of ID theft protection," the entry said.

In an statement, ADP, also known as Automatic Data Processing, described the incident as a "software code error" and expressed regret for any inconvenience.

"The issue has now been corrected, so any new tax forms being produced do not have this problem," the release said. "Although ADP believes that the risk of exposure is very low, the company has reached out to all impacted clients and offered to provide their affected employees with standard credit monitoring services."

ADP is a publicly traded payroll and benefits administrator responsible for processing the paychecks of 24 million, or one in six, U.S. workers. It handled nearly 48 million W-2s in 2012, according to a company fact sheet.

Police union president Ray Hunt said he was told that Social Security numbers and matching names were exposed because of a security failure, but that unauthorized access was unlikely. The police union also heard from the payroll company on Wednesday about the accuracy of the Facebook post.

"They said it was a programming error, but the information I received from the city of Houston called it a security breach," the union leader said. "I was one of the persons whose information was compromised."

Hunt said he is encouraging police union members to accept the company's offer of free ID theft monitoring.

"I am not incredibly alarmed," he said. "Of course, anytime your Social Security number and name is out there, it's a concern."